Beware Women Bearing Gifts!! It's all a plot

In the middle of the stuff with my dad being in the hospital, I went for lunch with a great gal friend of mine. She being the good hearted friend that she is brought me a bath bomb to use in the tub 'cause she figured it'd be all soothing & relaxing & nice. This past Wednesday night I decided to have a bath & relax & figured I'd toss the bath bomb in so I could say I'd made use of the present.

Not sure what I was expecting - I was kind of thinking it'd make bubbles or fizz or something. I haven't had a bubble bath since I was a kid, so thought it might be novel/weird to experience that again. But, no fizzing, no bubbling... the bomb quickly dissolved in the water leaving a mixed aroma of foreign smells that filled the room & some sort of skunge on the top of the water. At first I figured it was just a bunch of oil released by the bomb (I'd heard of bath oils) & figured that the 'skunge' was just light reflecting off the oil residue. So I had my bath & then got out of the tub & was drying off & was looking at my skin & thought, "what the...?" and then I noticed that my skin was covered in little silver & gold sparkles... turned out the skunge stuff was a whole bunch of sparkle-bits that embedded themselves onto my skin while I was soaking in the tub & i was now covered in sparkles....

Let me tell you, it was one of the most de-man-ify-ing moments I've experienced in a long time. The sense of masculinity just gets stripped away when you're standing there all covered in sparkly bits.... that & I was praying they'd rub off by morning 'cause I didn't want to go into work looking like "Mr. Sparkles"....

...but I apparently still had some on at work the next day... and Sharon was picking some off my face on Saturday night,... and I notice now while typing this on my bed, that there's still sparkly bits, hiding around, waiting to latch on again & make me look all, uh, 'pretty' (gak!)...

The Passion of the Downtown East Side

Another great poem off of the "No Fixed Address" Album:

"The Passion of the Downtown Eastside" by Bud Obsborn

After the board of directors meeting at the Carnegie Community Center
I walked outside the theatre where the meeting was held
to the balcony overlooking an alley to smoke a cigarette
In the alley I saw a man methodically going through the trash in an overflowing dumpster
and he reminds me of a man I have seen panning for gold in Rock Creek
I see empty syringe packages floating or sunken in dark dirty pools of water
and I see a pink blouse in a heap and drug addicts scurry to fix
and I hear shouts and screams and curses and a siren blaring

And I see a woman wearing a sleeveless white blouse with large purple polkadots
and a short white skirt with blue stripes
She's barefoot and has a multitude of bruises up and down her legs
and black needle marks on the back of her knees
like a swarm of ants fussing on something to eat
and there are needle tracks on her arm and on her jugular vein
and she has open sores and cuts and scratches
and a white gauze bandage around one wrist,
the bandaging of a kind I've known to cover stiched and slashed wrists
for even china white can't quiet the flashbacks ignited
from a childhood of rape and beatings and abandonments
so common down here

And then, this woman grips a shopping cart for balance and dances
her body twists, bends, writhes, crouches and rises
though thrust by a demon into grotesque positions
The man sifts through trash, drug addicts walk past with scarcely a glance
at this woman's performing a drug driven dance
frequently seen in the 100 block of East Hastings street

"The dance of the damned", I say to a friend standing next to me
He grunts in acknowledgement
"Should take them all out to the country," he says, "and make them clean up,
and if they want to leave they'll have to walk a long way"
I didn't tell him about junkies I've known who have walked down here
all the way from Abbotsford after leaving a treatment center.
My friend shakes his head in disgust and departs.

..and she still dances...

in an alley like a cesspool at the bottom of hell.

But then she grasps a slender piece of wood from the shopping cart,
snaps it and dances a few feet to a wooden hydro pole
She lifts the object she made above her head. She stands on one leg
and reaches to place it between the metal sheath around the pole.
And the wood.... it's a cross.... a wooden cross
her action is the culmination of her dance,
she spins away from the pole, bends over as though bowing down
takes three quick. little steps and is gone
sirens... screams... curses... shouts...

She danced the passion, she raised the cross,
here, for me, because I, too, have used drugs to spill my blood in this forsaken alley
In this dirty alley, she made a cross from a useless piece of wood
a piece of wood the builders rejected
She made a cross here for the One who stands most of all with the damned
The One whose cross is the only sense of her life and mine
In this abominable alley she planted the cross
The cross cast out by churches of wealth and success
The cross denied in society by the powers of success and wealth
She placed the truth exactly where it belongs, exactly here,
She made a place for Him, perhaps the only place that is left for Him,
though He would be in every place
And she knows where Christ is, this woman of all people,
is the one chosen to make this known today

Before my friend left he expressed sentiments simliar to those
about the One who died on a cross
"Why don't people clean up this alley?"My friend was only to wait a short time, for powers are aligning to do so
The same powers driving Jesus away, because here is a cross that cancels distinctions
between she who dances in an alley and the daughters of power on Robinson street
who buy thin gold crosses to wear around flawless necks and unmarked skin

But here in this alley the cross is dangerous This cross asks,
"Why have you forsaken me?"
Here in this alley, the cast out Christ asks, "Why have you forsaken me?"
The one cursed by the world, the object of cleanup campaigns the immoral one asks,
God asks,
"Why have you forsaken me?"

It is an astonishment and an amazement this blessing given here
in the most disgusting location in the city
But what words should I then use to describe the stock exchange on Granville street
The stock exchange where there is no cross, no truth, no blessings
The stock exchange which tries with other powers of lies and greed
to drive God, drive Christ, drive her and me from this city
Except here in this alley made holy,
here in this alley, one place at least, made holy.

and you who danced the passion of the downtown eastside
in faithfulness surpassing understanding
May the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you....always

Deciduous

"Deciduous" by Diane L. Tucker

Alone I grow among the columns

bearing up sky's temple roof

Alone among the firs

In the shadow of their hovering limbs

Verdant in every season

I alone let loose a sweep of leaves

The wind shifts autumns continent

Whisks my empire clean away

Piece by crumbling piece

The firs bear amongst their bodies

My slow dispersing death

Winter comes. The firs stand unchanged

Sap still snakes through every shining needle

Wind, snow, icy rain

The towering firs swell green against them all

I alone, in my deciduous shadow

Know the stripped relief

The beauty of the bare brown branch

This poem, found on Winnipeg Centre Vineyard's wonderful "No Fixed Address" album (by the 'north end artist collective), has been coming up over & over again in my mind over the last little while and is fast becoming my 'theme' in this new year season.

Recently I was talking with a friend about the new year & looking back over the year that was & whether there were more ups than downs in the year that's passed (and past)...and I had to say that there were definitely more ups than downs....

Last year was a hard one. In 2002 i lost my job & began my 'fall', my autumn. I had a year sabbatical from work (i.e. was unemployed for a long time) & God started stripping away everything that I thought my identity rested in - a job, a title, ministry, giftings, money, car, so many things... even my sense of 'honour' - the sense that I was a good guy - everything that I thought made me stand out as a man, as an individual, everything I thought made me worthy of love, He stripped away so that I was left with just me... and yeah, I sort of thought that process was done within the year, but it sort of lasted well into 2004 & as well... The point of that exercise was to show me that I was loved for being just me, not for any of the other stuff....

this year had been especially hard because it was all about learning to live in the midst of desolation - I had been stripped of dreams, stripped of destiny & that was the hardest part for me because I could always sit there & hope I'd be a somebody someday....or do something great or save the world or find some aspect for why it mattered that I had been on planet. This year, my life became reduced to becoming middle class - to go to work, do a job you sometimes like, sometimes hate, come home, watch TV, pay bills, sleep, get up, repeat ad nausea... I found I had no heart for ministry, no desire to 'save the world' & I sort of 'cursed' (gently) myself for that, for not having any drive or desire, for becoming one of those 'old' people who had dreamt of changing the world & who had now lost them & only had dreams of paying off the mortgage early....

and yeah, honestly the living without dreams kind of sucks. The mundane becomes the only rule of life. There is nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for, only this vague sense that things could be different down the road somewhere....maybe, hopefully... and all of it felt like winter... Sure there were definitely lots of fantastic moments in there, but some moments of heartbreak & really just a lot of moments of, well, of psuedo-nothing....

... But yeah, the time with my dad in the hospital has sort of helped me see the beauty of weakness. My dad is a powerful man, way stronger than me & than a lot of people I know - a strength both of body and soul & spirit. Seeing him in the hospital with his heart, his engine, weakened & him needing to sleep & rest as they cut him open or jab him with needles, seeing him weakened has not diminished in any way my respect or my love for him. It's done the opposite in that I recognize how that, even stripped of everything that could possibly make my dad a great man, with everything he could 'do' for me removed, my love for him is not diminished.... the thought of losing him is unthinkable & all of this makes me realize how much I love & cherish my dad (and the rest of my family) just because they are, well, them... there is no reason, there is only love.....

Jean Vanier, in the CBC interview I heard talks about 'growing down' about the way that he used to be the 'leader' at L'Arche - about how he used to look after everyone & now, he walks into the community of the mentally challenged & they look at him & say, "Jean, you look tired, you should lie down & have a nap" - those who were the 'children' now become the parents to 'mother' him - and what is perhaps more freeing is that he is now at the point where can freely say "Yes, I do feel tired, I think I will lay down for a nap" - no longer must he prove himself, must he 'be there' to make things happen, to 'look after' people. He is free to be himself without pretences, he is free to admit frailty, to admit vulnerability & find that he is embraced, cherished, loved in the totality of his being - that he is loved, accepted & respected simply as he is, not because of what he can do....

...and so this is the lesson of seasons, the lesson of the deciduous.... In my vanity, I long to be a conifer, to be an evergreen always verdant, able to stand resilient against any of life's changes, always able to maintain strength & positive outlook & such.... but I am realizing how deciduous I am, how I am linked to seasons beyond my control, to the changing winds & temperatures of a climate that is beyond me, some great cosmic cycle that I find myself a part of instead of master of.... and I find that I must bend to the seasons, to embrace the warmth of summer, the newness of spring, the decay of autumn & the death/dearth of winter.... I must learn to beauty of the stripped brown branch, the beauty of being nothing & yet being loved....

The End of the Ordeal (?)

So, the last time I wrote anything about my dad was on Sunday the 8th. Crazy how a week flies by. The week went like this: Monday I'm up & into work by 7:30 & work solid through the day & leave at 3 to get more puzzles (dad blazed through the two I'd brought him before) & head to the hospital. There I find dad totally upset because one of the doctors has told him the pacemaker won't get put in until sometime next week & Dad (who is already stir crazy) is livid & raging about this - yelling that people are lying to him & that he's going to check himself out the next day if the ICD isn't getting implanted this week. To further help the anger, he'd been shuffled out of his room, the nurse just about screwed up his medications & all kinds of other stuff went wrong & he was totally fed up. Deep down he'd just gotten tired of being there & desperately wanted to go home & see mom & stuff (my brother observed that my dad has possibly never been away from home for >2 weeks - let alone stuck in a hospital for that time). So I spent the time trying to calm dad down & trying to get some kind of answers from the nurses/doctors. Lots of times I was tempted to let the frustration take over & start yelling at people, but I figured that nurses could be a vengeful lot & dad could become the human pincushion if we angered the staff too much. (apologies to all the hard working, dedicated, kind & compassionate nurses out there. Situations like this really show the contrast between people who care about the patients & those who are there for other reasons).

Oh, & some doofus came in that day telling dad that my dad was still stuck in hospital 'cause he didn't have enough faith. If he really believed in Jesus, Jesus would heal him 'cause Jesus doesn't want people sick.

It's lucky this guy was in before I came in. I would've torn out his throat or worse. It's one thing to have some theological debate about whether the 'faithful' get sick or not, but it's another thing to go into a hospital & sow despair to people who are already hanging on to hope by a slender thread. (though apparently this guy's friend was in to get a pacemaker installed & needed to come to calgary to be 'healed' 'cause there was too much unbelief in Acme where he lived.... nice, since it's OBVIOUSLY not a problem with your faith, you find someone else to blame for it)

At supper time, one of the doctors finally did come around & let Dad know that they had found him a place in the surgery schedule & he was booked in for surgery on Wednesday morning. So, in the end, things looked like they were going to turn out (Dad figures the yelling helped).

Tuesday went OK with another day of early to work, blaze through the day, leave at 3, head to the hospital, hang out, go home, try to get my head together & then sleep.

Wednesday it took an hour to get to work because of the snow, & then found they were taking dad in for surgery at 11, so left some early from work (noon) to go hang out with him while he recovered (had to lie still for 6 hours) & then left him in the evening to go to a decidedly jazz danceworks performance with my friend Sharon. (nice to have a break of 'normality' in the midst of the hospital routine)

Thursday, I get into work early, then get a call at 11AM from my dad who tells me that they're discharging him. The doctors had said on the Wednesday night, that they'd keep him until Friday AM for observation, but, the hospital needed beds & was kicking out everyone that could walk & so they told dad he'd have to gather his things & wait in the sun-room for someone to come get him. So I blaze out of work & get to the hospital to find dad hooked to an IV of antibiotics & he starts to complain of chest pains as a result of the antibiotics & we try to find a nurse & she doesn't arrive for another 10 minutes & by this time, dad's chest feels horrible & he's not sure what's going on or why it's hurting... After a much longer time, the doctors finally come, give him a check over & tell him that it's not his heart/a heart attack that's causing the pain - maybe it's indigestion/gas or something, maybe it's something else & so we pack up Dad's gear (& the plethora of puzzles I picked up for him) & head to my place where I try to organize ice packs & food for him. He spends most of the night in relative pain & sleeps on & off sitting on the couch. Ten or eleven PM rolls around & he's ready for bed & tries to lie down & pain goes shooting up from his heart to his neck & he decides he'll have to sleep sitting on the couch, reclined slightly back... I phone the roomies cell's asking them to be quiet when they come home & I camp out on the floor of the living room to listen to dad... to make sure he's still breathing, to listen if he needs anything.... at about 11:30 I guess the pain increases & dad feels like he's going to die. I by this time have collapsed on the floor & am dead asleep from exhaustion... so, Dad, being the person that he is, being the person that I'm like, decides not to 'inconvenience me' by waking me up & so just suffers through it until he falls back asleep. he tells me he 'wasn't sure he'd make it to morning', but figured he'd let me sleep....

The next day he feels slightly better & we take him home. The drive goes well. He's feeling a bit better, but still in pain when he breathes in... we stop in the pharmacy in town & pick up his bag of medications & bring him home to mom who is very glad to see him. We find that the blood pressure cuff that used to fit him well, now wraps around too far & the velcro won't line up to lock because his arms have shrunk. Friday night he's sleeping in a chair again because of the pain when he lies down.

Saturday I leave, heading for home so mom & dad can adjust to figuring things out with this new 'live' that they have. I half expect to get a desperate phone call on the cell for me to turn around to come pick up dad & whisk him back to the hospital, but the phone call doesn't come. Sunday morning I phone home & dad's had a fantastic night's sleep & can nearly lie fully flat & his chest only hurts a little bit when he breathes his deepest... & so yeah, hearing that was such a relief, such a load off my shoulders.

...I wanted to bring him home triumphantly, to escort him back from his battles like the victorious warrior that had overcome the challenges. I was looking for my 'happy ending' to this ordeal, but instead I get the trepidatious, precarious half victory of bringing dad home still hurting, still vulnerable, with a million changes to deal with & a life (and perhaps a body) to rebuild with new constraints & challenges.

But perhaps the pain is good. Dad has to take it easy for 6 weeks to let the leads of the ICD set/heal properly. If there was no pain, if there was no obvious limitation, it would be easy to ignore the 6 week waiting period, easy to rush back into the busy-ness of it all & end up pushing himself & maybe damaging himself worse or undoing what was done in the hospital.

Or at least this is the 'silver lining' I look for - some reason to explain a 'higher purpose' for the pain, for the lack of closure... It seems like with some of the dark times that we don't overcome them in the sense that we completely wipe out all memory & trace of the pain, but instead we overcome by going through, by enduring, the pain and the pain & it's mark/effect are not forgotten, but we find ourselves living in a life that is so much greater, more beautiful, than the dark moments that it makes us realize that the pain was worth it - like this idea of how the joy of a child eclipses the pain of childbirth (though I've never had to go through childbirth (thankfully) & so I wouldn't know).

....our pastor visited dad in the hospital & read him a passage out of Hebrews 12 about Jesus enduring the cross. at the time I was angry because I thought that wouldn't help, but I heard my dad saying how much he appreciated that & how he was meditating on that passage for quite a while afterwards....

...and yeah, I start to wonder if whether or not we meet Jesus most plainly in the moments where we share in "the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death".... where we weep with him in Gethsemane after all our friends have fallen asleep instead of praying with us, watching with us.... where we endure our cross of suffering and/or shame waiting for the resurrections that (in theory) lie before us....

Letters to Angels: In my Father's Presence

....kind of tired & worn today... but am sort of OK. It's been a long week & it'll be another long one. My dad is in hospital for the rest of the week - they're going to put an ICD in him (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator ). It's a fancy pacemaker that speeds up your heart if it's too slow (though we're not worried about that) & tries to stop it when the heart rate goes too fast. If he gets his irregular heartbeat where the ventricles (bottom bit of the heart - the main pumping area that pumps blood to the rest of the body) pump too fast & are all irregular (which is bad 'cause the atria of the heart are supposed to fill the ventricles with blood & then the ventricles pump blood to the rest of the body - if the ventricles pump too fast, then the heart chamber doesn't get filled with oxygenated blood & soon the ventricles are pumping nothing & no oxygen gets to the brain & you die) - anyhow, if his heartbeat is irregular, this ICD thing is supposed to stop it by 1) pacing the heart quicker than the rapid heartbeat - this is supposed to sort of knock the heart off balance & help it reset itself into a regular rhythm, or 2) if that doesn't work it tries doing little shocks to your heart (feels like someone hitting your chest) to try to reset the heart rhythm & 3) if that all fails & you go into cardiac arrest, are about to pass out & die, it full on shocks you like the defibrillators you see on TV (the paddles) - I guess this feels like someone kicks you in the chest..... & apparently if they don't calibrate it right, you can occasionally get shocked by accident.

...so yeah, lots of scary stuff there - Dad's got 3 main problems: 1) coronary artery disease (i.e. blockages in his arteries) - doctor said we all get that sooner or later - they fixed some blockages in his heart with the angioplasties, but the reality is that if you have blockages in your heart you likely have blockages elsewhere in the body... so you have to worry about stuff getting clogged off or if one of the blockages breaks loose it can get caught in the arteries & wedge itself in there & stop blood flow & also kill you. They're treating this with drugs, 2) he's got the irregular heartbeat that they're treating with the ICD & 3) he has a weak heart - the ventricles appear to be large, damaged & weakened & they're not pumping as well as they should - again, they're hoping to treat this with drugs to try to make the heart a) not work as hard & b) strengthen it & hope it heals itself a bit....

So he has more tests early this week (one where they insert a radioactive tracer into some of his blood & then inject it back into him & watch it travel around his body so they can see how his heart is pumping stuff through) & other stuff... ICD is hopefully put in on Thursday & Dad's hoping to go home on Friday or Saturday. Hopefully it works 'cause he's going crazy in the hospital. He was pretty bummed yesterday thinking that he'd never get out, but the doctor talked with him quite a bit yesterday & so he feels better.

The doctors were also talking that he couldn't drive for 6 months after getting the ICD - he felt that was a 'death sentence' 'cause it would mean he's stuck at home & has no freedom even to go visit people in town (the challenges of being on an acreage) But yeah, I guess there is some debate about that now amongst the doctors, so we'll see....

Anyhow, a bit exhausted. It's been a bit of a weight to carry & I'm feeling it a bit tonight. It's been wonderful to hang out with my dad & to connect with him & to be his little bit of sanity in the day.... it's been some decent times bonding with him. I've been having a hard time finding stuff to talk about with him (you just run out of things to say after hours of looking at each other) & so I've brought in printouts of his favorite political blogs & brought in some puzzles that fit on his food table thing so he can sit at his bed & work on them. We've been working on a couple of them together & so it's been nice to just be quite & tag team the puzzle & then if we think of something to say we pipe up & say it - but it removes the pressure from both of us of having to be interesting all the time.... ('cause I know I'm not interesting all the time).

have thought about calling you sometimes. It's nice to have a 'safety net' out there - people that will catch you a bit when you collapse.... a person maybe doesn't use the safety net as much as they should, but it sure does give the freedom to know you can push it & the net is still there to catch you a bit. It's just been a bit tiring & hard - wonderful in many ways, too, but yeah, I'm a bit worn. Friendship stuff has been a bit wonky.... I'm doing the silly things of pressuring relationships - the stuff with dad has been wonky in that I'm looking at my life now & 1) realizing that dad would love to see us boys married & having kids & it's something that I'd like for him to see/be there for part of my life & I realize the clock is ticking on that, and 2) I'm afraid that I'll have the heart stuff that dad has & I'm hit with the reality that my life may be shorter than expected & so I'm worried about timing & if I have enough time on planet to get married/raise kids... and so yeah, I'm now looking at my female friends more closely & seeing which ones are 'suitable candidates' to get married - sad, eh? I've dropped from worrying about wanting to fall in love to just wanting to find someone so I can start the baby-making process before I die... this wasn't exactly what I had in mind....

...came out of the hospital tonight thinking about how I've been in "the presence of my father" & how I know I love him & figure he loves me & how that feels good & centering & that the rest of the stuff doesn't matter so much. & thought about how that preachers often refer to the difference with Jesus being that he was always "in the presence of His Father" and knew that He was perfectly loved by God & this is what freed him from so much of the shackles we humans tend to wear for the sake of earning/finding love instead of receiving what is freely given from God.... and so yeah, I feel good in this odd sense of just recognizing that my relationship with my dad is good & it's such a privilege to be able to 'be there' for him at least a little bit & to show him love....

Dad's at the Foothills Hospital

Got out of a meeting at work today at noon to find a message on the work answering machine from my mom letting me know that they had loaded Dad into the ambulance at 10:45 & were sending him down to Calgary for the angiogram. So I headed down to the foothills hospital, arriving at around 12:30/12:45 & met & chatted with dad. At 1:45 he went into the room for his angiogram & I went out to get some food, etc. Upon returning, they let me know that he had a couple of blockages & they were doing two angioplasties on him (they use little balloons to expand the arteries & then put in a shunt to hold the arteries open).

So, at 5ish or so I was able to come in & see him. They insert the catheter into a major artery in the groin area & then shove the tube thing up to his heart & start injecting dye so they can see the blockages & so after you're done, they have to make sure that heals well otherwise you could bleed to death. So it means lying still for 4 hours straight (taking him to 9PM). Somewhere along the way he did something to open it up & they had to sort of reseal it which then took him until 10:30 PM before he could move. So he was going a bit stir crazy until then. I ended up staying until 10:10 - guess visiting hours technically ended at 10, but the nurse let me stay a bit longer.

Good news is the blockages in the arteries are removed. Bad news (or just not the "everything's good now" news) is that the irregular heartbeat thing is still there. They wanted to see if removing the blockages would fix it, but it didn't. He had a couple of episodes while I was with him - just minor bits, but they're still there. They're trying to treat it some/bring it under control with medications. So they will have to run electro-physiology tests tomorrow or the next day. They also found one of his arteries is, well, just abnormally placed. Don't have the diagrams with me & can't remember the names, but there's the right coronary artery & the left coronary artery on either side of the heart sort of feeding into the heart. Then there's another big one sort of in the middle of the two (though sort of branching off the left coronary artery. I think they're all connected to the aorta, but I really don't know. Anyhow in dad, from what they've said it looks like the middle artery is connected to the right coronary artery & the two are sort of a bit disconnected to the left artery. Guess this is 'congenital' (I don't know what these words mean: congenital, congestive, congenitve... i don't know which ones are real words & which one's I've made up....) - it's something he's been born with (and maybe has passed on to us boys)... no one's sure if this is a problem or not. They also figure that he's had a couple of heart attacks - one recently at any rate. & so with the concern from past doctors about the 30% return flow, we may be looking at valve or muscle damage which may be a bit harder to deal with. (and have no real idea how they're planning to fix the irregular heartbeat). They may end up giving him an MRI, too.

So yeah, looks like he's in the hospital here for at least 2 more days... though it's really unclear what's going to happen or how long it'll take to fix things...

Hate the not knowing part & the waiting part. Makes me wish I paid better attention in biology classes....

Thanks for your thoughts/prayers

Sleep avoidance

I don't want to sleep. ...well, now I do, 'cause it's 12:30 & exhuastion is finally starting to kick in, but at 10 o'clock & 11o'clock & even at 11;30 - all of which are more sane times to go to bed, I didn't want to sleep.....

...I'm home in Calgary now. Mom & Preston have been in Red Deer keeping Dad company. I've been here in the hopes that I could get a few days away as an 'emotional'/'physical' break so I'd be ready to be available when Dad comes down for his angiogram/possible surgery & then I could be present to, well, to basically do nothing, but just to be there so he's not alone, so he has an advocate & so he has a friendly face waiting for him when/if he needs/wants it.

We were hoping he'd come down Wednesday, but so far we've heard nothing definite... we've heard nothing really. Mom & Preston left today 'cause they have to get back to their lives a bit. So tomorrow is Dad's 1st day completely on his own....

....mentally I feel like I have this obligation to clean/prepare while I'm here. I'm trying to organize my life & organize my house so I'm 'ready' in case dad needs to stay over for a while & recover from surgery. Normally I don't care so much about how the place looks (which I'm sure many (especially the roomies) can attest to), but I want something at least kind of halfway decent for dad.... and yeah, I have good intentions, but lack the motivation. I don't want to 'do' anything really....

...but I don't want to sleep... rest is likely my greatest friend right now, but there's the numbness I feel when I think about laying there in the silence with nothing but the pumping of blood echoing in my ears. The silence, though welcome, sort of leaves room for all the thoughts that have not been spoken... the voice of loneliness, the voice of responsibility of all that I have not done, not accomplished or (in the case of work) have no idea how I'm going to accomplish it. There are the worries about my dad. There is the aching of not wanting to have him face this stuff alone... there are the longings for something more...

...and so I stay up, keep finding one more thing to do, one more activity, one more excuse not to let my head hit pillow.... and I wait until exhuastion takes over so the time between laying down & drifting into the dreamscape is short... no time for the voices to creep in & talk to me of all the things left undone, or that tell me how undone I am....

and then I'll go through a jumble of dreams - mixtures of metaphors & mayhem... the garbled language of dreams where your subconscious speaks with uninhibited voice... and then I awake, far too soon, to screaming alarms & hastily pressed snooze buttons & find the silence waiting for me... In the morning the silence is peaceful - it's the calm before the 'doing' - it's a place of rest before the effort, a place to prepare for the onslaught of the day...

but then the day continues & the night come & the cycle repeats.... the silence waits for us & perhaps waits for that chance to speak to us & whisper to us in our dreams.....

'nite.

CBC Interview with Jean Vanier

On the drive home from Red Deer to Calgary, after leaving my dad & mom & brother & 'abandoning' the family to get back to normal life & wait here for Dad to come down for his angiogram, I was surfing the radio channels for something to listen to on the solitary road home.....

Ended up at AM1010 listening to CBC radio. They had an interview with Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche community for the mentally disabled (where I believe Henri Nouwen worked for a portion of his life).

Anyhow, brilliant interview, lots of deep stuff to think about. Very deep guy.

Go to http://www.cbc.ca/tapestry/archives/2005/041705.html & scroll to the bottom of the page. Once there, you can listen to (and/or download) the interview. It's nearly an hour long, but well worth it. If I get more time sometime, I may post more of my reflections on it. But it was extremely relevant to my situation now just dealing with weakness & growing old & life & love & everything... Highly recommend

Crying over (un)spilt milk

In the Bible in 1 Samuel 23 & 1 Chronicles 11, there is this dual account of the exploits of King David's "Mighty Men" - some of David's soldiers that pulled off near super-human exploits. In the middle of these passages is this account of where David & his men are all holed up in some cave & the army of the Philistines (no, not people with bad taste in art, but the warrior nation that lived in what is now the Gaza strip) is all encamped in the villiage below. The enemy has taken over the place & has David on the run & David, being a good melancholic is moaning & whining & goes, "oh, woe is me, how I wish I could drink of the water from the pool in Bethlehem."

And, as the story goes, his three mightiest men sort of overhear this, so they gear up, leave the cave, battle their way all the way down into the city, draw water from the well for David & then battle their way all the way back up to deliver the water to David.

When David gets the water, he's totally in shock & goes, "whoa, what did you guys do that for? You could've been killed!! I was just moping & here you took me seriously?!" and he pours out the water as a drink offering to God saying, "I can't drink this water, it would be like drinking the blood of these faithful men, faithful friends."

and it's such an odd little story, but it's always been this picture for me of friendship, of love. Maybe this is just how I'm wired, but I find when I care about someone, I sort of end up responding like these 'mighty men' - no battling philistines so far, but what I mean is that my heart listens for the longings of the people I care about & then when I hear them go, "oh, I wish I had this..." or "what I wouldn't give for....", then I rush off on my 'mission' to procure whatever their heart longs for. Usually I get weird looks & odd responses &, perhaps like these mighty men, find my gift that I 'risked' for poured out on the ground.... but there is this thing about love that you long to be somewhat of a 'joy-bringer' to the people you love. When you care deeply about someone, sometimes the greatest joy you get is just seeing one moment of joy, one flicker of delight or happiness in the eyes/heart of the one you love.

or maybe that's just me....

...but was thinking about this story when I was in the hospital with my dad. They keep bringing him meals with coffee/tea & he never drinks that stuff. So he was complaining that they weren't giving him something he could drink & so we mentioned that we could get him some 500ml cartons of milk from the hospital cafeteria downstairs. Once he said that it might be nice to get one of the cartons, I was off like a shot, hustling down to the cafeteria & then hustling back this little carton of milk like it was some hard-fought prize, like water stolen from a philistine controlled well...

...and yeah, dad didn't gush (and thankfully didn't pour the milk on the floor like David did with the water), he didn't say much more than a grunted 'thank you' - but it brought so much joy to be able to do something nice for him.... and yeah, sometimes I feel choked that I can't find anything else to bring him, no way to fix everything for him, hurry up the angiogram, heal his heart, relieve his boredom.... Somethings aren't as easy to 'get' as cartons of milk...

Letter to a friend

Wrote this stuff in response to a friend's blog entry. some if was semi-intelligent & perhaps worth sharing, so thought I'd post it here....


Some random thoughts (not sure if you were looking for responses to your questions/rants or if you were just venting. Sometimes I find venting way more effective than the answers to the questions).

A) How many know what they're doing?: I'm one of the others who doesn't know what I'm doing & feels constantly like I'm pretending to be an adult. Mind you, you've seen some of the collection of G.I. Joe's at my house, so you know how badly I'm failing at the adult gig. I have a 'career' and a house & everything & I still don't know what I want to be 'when I grow up'.... not sure I really want to grow up either. I was sort of hoping to make some plans for this year (go to greece for two weeks). Now with my dad's heart problems, I'm pretty sure none of that's going to happen & so don't know any of my tomorrows.

I think we grow into this tension (i.e. two opposite things co-existing & pulling against each other) of learning contentment & to enjoy our perpetual 'now' while also being caught longing for something just beyond our grasp... at the end of our days we may have slowly, gradually have moved our 'now' to look like our dreams, or we may end up someplace far different and, if God is gracious(which I hear that he is), far better than we could've dreamed. Ultimately we find all those dreams that drive us crazy have really been a longing for heaven, a longing for union with Jesus...

B) The middle questions: the rescued/dead cycle is a normal one, or at least one that I & many others have experienced ini our spiritual journey. You go through this place of revelation where you understand another piece of who God is & it's brilliant & beautiful - you feel like you're alive for the first time - like you've never really seen the world, or never really breathed before. It's incredible & marvellous, like falling in love & then, slowly, as the euphoria passes, the emptiness sneaks up on us & ambushes us & suddenly we're thrown into this pit of despair & desolation & we don't know which direction is up or who we are or who God is &, well, really we don't know anything for a while. it's the cycle of consolation/desolation & God brings it to us for a few reasons - well, many reasons, but I can think of three off the top of my head:
- 1) He reminds us not to take Him for granted: Sometimes we forget that He is our source for everything, our sustainer, the One who is love & the Joy-bringer/Hope-giver.... sometimes we forget that He isn't the vending machine in the sky or Santa claus. It's mostly when our 'love' for Him is really a selfish looking after ourselves. We love Him 'cause of what we can get from Him, or we show love to Him 'cause we have a problem & need him to help.... & so He responds to this by 'removing' Himself (i.e. making himself feel less real/tangible/present - He never leaves, He just feels like he has). And our hearts feel His absence & we hate it & start to choke on our longings & ache for HIs return... (this kind of gets described poetically in song of songs/song of solomon chapters 2&3)
- 2) the dark night of the soul: He wants to mature our love, wants to help us realize that we love Him not 'cause of what he does for us/gives us, but for who He is. As you'd want a lover to love you for you instead of for some image of you or because of how you make them feel about themselves, so too, God wants to be loved for who He is. And so there are times where He will 'remove' Himself (again, He's right there, we just can't feel him the way we normally do (though note that I don't 'feel' him for the large majority of my life)). It's one of the most torturous experiences of our existence & the most confusing, but our love does come through stronger & more mature - Song of Songs chapters 5&6 describes this painful process
- 3) He wants us to lose our 'idols': Often we worship an image of Jesus that isn't really anything like Jesus - we have this picture in our head of who He is & how He operates & it's based off of how our parents treated us or what people have told us & it makes God look all petty & mean & vengeful & ready to smite us when we don't live up to expectations. Since Jesus/God is different than this image, He'll often do stuff that is unexpected both 'cause its what he wants to do & 'cause it messes with our screwed up expectations of how He should be reacting. When this happens, we often panic 'cause we're not sure if our 'god' is real. Really we've just been worshiping this false image of 'god' and we have to throw down that 'idol' and get to know the true heart of Jesus. That one's painful 'cause we have this crisis of faith & a hard time releasing the false image.... and usually have to kind of experience healing for the damage done by the false image.

But yeah, if what you're going through doesn't fit any of the above, well, still don't worry 'cause the renewal/death cycle happens a lot... it's like the changing of seasons - we have summers & winters in our lives... some people are like evergreens & sort of press through regardless of the season, but most of us are more 'deciduous' (the trees that lose their leaves - not sure if I've spelt it right) and we go through the times of growth, lots of life with branches green, then we blaze into fall with brilliant colours, only to lose all that once made us feel alive or brilliant & we experience the 'death' of winter, only to wake renewed again in the spring...

I don't understand exactly why the cycle is there/is needed, but I just know that it exists (same thing that I don't understand why women bleed every month, but there is a cycle of life/death in that, too, that is a mystery to me, 'specially as a man).

And yeah, the biggest struggle of all our faith is "who is jesus?". He's the central figure of our faith, the one we're suppossed to be in love with & we sort of don't trust Him 'cause, well, we've had a lot of people tell us who jesus is or tell us that they represent Him & they seem to talk/act completely different to the Jesus the Bible seems to talk about. & then, since they supposedly 'know' more than we do, we start to doubt ourselves & doubt our relationship with Him.

I know that our faith is supposed to grow in community - to grow with people who can encourage/challenge us, but sometimes it's much easier to figure out who God is on our own a bit - it's also dangerous 'cause then we start to make Jesus look like us & start to turn ourselves into 'god', but yeah, at least in those places we're only dealing with our own crap that screws up our image of God instead of everyone else's crap plus ours....

The stuff God promises is unbelievable - it's too good to be true (or as some authors have penned it, too good NOT to be true). God is, according to 1 John, LOVE & yeah, our whole concept of love is a bit suspect & we have these ideals of what 'perfect love' is, but it's so frightening 'cause we long for perfect love, but are so afraid that perfect love doesn't exist or, if it does, it won't accept/want/love us.... & we have this fear 'cause we've been rejected/hurt by lots of others that have told us they loved us (or at least that's my issues/struggles). & so God keeps trying to convince us that He loves us & we keep holding Him at arm's length 'cause we're scared that he's going to let us down... sometimes we do the 'preemptive strikes' and try to 'dump' Him before He can reject us, but it never really works 'cause He's real, real persistent in His love for us.

So yeah, just know that all of us fight with these feelings. the book "the divine romance' talks about this or you can just read through most of the Bible - Jacob's life in middle to end of Genesis is great for this battle thing. Job is another great one to read through about the battle with believing God's goodness - or Elijah's rant/wanting to kill himself in 1 Kings 19.

C) Are you really saved/can your faith be smothered that easily?: My response: Yes to the saved, no to the smothered thing. Now, if you talk to enough people, people will tell you one thing or another. I can't say anything to 'prove' things to you one way or the other or anything to alleviate your fears... but yeah, it really comes down to getting to know the heart of God. Read through the gospels (matthew, Mark, Luke & John). Really try to listen to the heartbeat of jesus & understand who He is. Try to read it with an open heart - not reading it from what others have told you that it says - try to read it all with fresh eyes, to let God show you His heart & let you know His love for you.

I'd love to be able to walk you through the big picture of the Bible - especially the Old Testament & God's relationship with Israel. In Genesis, humanity rejects God's love & aligns themselves on a self-destructive path of chasing all that is not-love. From that point on, God starts to work His master plan to win back His bride, and so God 'births' a nation named Israel through Abraham, isaac & Jacob & then calls them out of Egypt through moses & leads them to a land to be their home through Joshua & then sets them up as a nation through David. From that point on it is this tug of war, this love/hate relationship where God comes to Israel saying, I want to love you & be your husband & for you to shine the light of my love to the world & Israel sometimes responds in love & light, but often responds in selfishness & prostitute themselves to many other lovers & so God (like in Hosea 1-3 or Ezekiel 16) pleads with them & tries to woo them back to Him, sometimes He removes His presence/protection (see the answers in B), all the time he's trying to win them back & they keep rejecting him & so finally Jesus comes to earth, takes on flesh in order to walk in His bride's shoes & to give a face & hand to His love for them & they, as you know, reject Him, kill him & then he is raised from the dead, His blood being the sacrifice for their sins & his new life being offered to them freely.... and then yeah, Israel kind of keeps rejecting Jesus, but there are prophesies in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Revelations, Zechariah, etc. etc. that all talk about a day when God will redeem the nation...

& yeah, all through the Bible there is this picture of a God who has this relentless love that will not stop, will not cease loving us. With our salvation, He is the author & finisher of it. His grace covers all our sins, his blood covers all of our past, present & future. You chose Jesus in the same way that a bride chooses a husband. He asks for your heart & you took a risk & said 'yes' and, as with any relationship, you likely really didn't know what you were getting into & now you have a lifetime to learn & grow through the ups & downs of a spiritual marriage. And, even if you find a happily married couple (which is more rare now), you can see that there are times when people go, "I'm so happy about this", but there are also other times when people say, "wow, I can't believe how hard this all is".....

...and yeah, on the flip side of your choice, God picked you for salvation, chose to woo you to Himself & He continues to woo you over & over & over & over again....

Part of the reason your faith can't be crushed so easily is that God will keep it alive. Even if you tried to shut it down, He wouldn't leave & it would drive you bonkers. His love will not let you go & the persistence of His love, described in Romans 8, will endure - that nothing will separate you from His love, not death or live, angel or demon, things present or things to come, etc.....

but yeah, long replies to decent rants. Hope some of it makes sense.
Hang in there,
Kirk